Census: Area Government Workers Average More in Pay

ANDERSON - For more than 125 years, Americans have celebrated Labor Day.

Starting in 1882, more than 10,000 workers marched down the streets of New York City in a parade organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary.

Eleven years later, more than half the states were observing Labor Day and by 1884, Congress passed a bill establishing it as a federal holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon after and designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Here are some other details about Labor Day, by the numbers:

- 0.9 percent: change in employment in the United States between December 2009 and December 2010.

- 153.2 million: number of people 16 and older in the nation's workforce as of July 2011.

- 6.2 million: number of workers who remain unemployed for more than 6 months.

- 15.9 percent of blacks who are unemployed, as compared to 11.3 percent for Hispanics and 8.1 percent for white Americans.

- 84.7 percent: percentage of full-time workers 18 to 64 covered by health insurance during all or part of 2009.

- 3.039 million: number of kindergarten-12th grade teachers working in the U.S. in 2009, compared to 1.478 million janitors and building cleaners, 117,405 bakers, 101,889 computer operators, 55,733 telemarketers and 10,980 actors.

- 25.1 minutes: average commute to work.

- 76.1: percentage of American workers who drive alone to work.

- 5.9 million: number of people in the U.S. who worked from home in 2009.

- $47,127: real median earnings for male full-time workers in 2009.

- $36,278: real median earnings for female full-time workers in 2009.

- $18.37: mean hourly wage for all civilian employees in the Greenville area in 2009, compared to $24.21 per hour for government employees.

Sources: U. S. Census Bureau, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Center for Law and Social Policy.